Category: Urdu

I could not find a translation of the complete nazm Nisar main teri galiyon ke on the internet while writing the previous post and have attempted my own translation of Faiz’s popular and, in present circumstances in Pakistan, a particularly apt nazm. The original nazm is reproduced below the translation. I have taken quite a few liberties in this humble attempt at translating this highly idiomatic poem.

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My salutations to thy sacred streets, O beloved nation!Where a tradition has been invented- that none shall walk with his head held highIf at all one takes a walk, a pilgrimageOne must walk, eyes lowered, the body crouched in fear

The heart in a tumultuous wrench at the sight Of stones and bricks locked away and mongrels breathing free

In this tyranny that has many an excuse to perpetuate itselfThose crazy few that have nothing but thy name on their lipsFacing those power crazed that both prosecute and judge, wonderTo whom does one turn for defence, from whom does one expect justice?

But those whose fate it is to live through these timesSpend their days in thy mournful memories

When hope begins to dim, my heart has often conjuredYour forehead sprinkled with starsAnd when my chains have glitteredI have imagined that dawn must have burst upon thy face

Thus one lives in the memories of thy dawns and dusksImprisoned in the shadows of the high prison walls

Thus always has the world grappled with tyrannyNeither their rituals nor our rebellion is new Thus have we always grown flowers in fireNeither their defeat, nor our final victory, is new!

Thus we do not blame the heavensNor let bitterness seed in our hearts

We are separated today, but one day shall be re- unitedThis separation that will not last beyond tonight, bears lightly on usToday the power of our exalted rivals may touch the zenithBut these four days of omniscience too shall pass

Those that love thee keep, beside themThe cure of the pains of a million heart- breaks

Imran Khan, arrested last week under the anti- terrorism act after Islamist students handed him over to the police, is now lodged in a jail with hardened criminals.

Niazi (said) that Imran was being kept in a cell with common criminals, some of them suspected of murder and other violent crimes.

Imran was taken to Dera Ghazi Khan from Lahore where he was held by radical Islamist students during a protest on Wednesday and handed over to the police, who charged him under the anti-terrorism act. (link)

Yet, Musharaff would have the world believe that the so called emergency is against the Islamists and that Pakistan is on the road to democracy! This is what he said on Nov 3:

“Pakistan is at a critical point. Terror has also taken roots even in Islamabad. Hardliners are spreading fundamentalist ideas about Islam across the country,” he said.

“Tum shayar nahin hotey, toh bahut hi ordinary aadmi hotey”(Had you not been a poet, you would have been a very ordinary man”

These are the words of Aarti Devi, the ambitious, Indira Gandhi- like character in the movie Aandhi, directed towards her husband. The dialogues for this movie were written by Gulzar, and apparently this dialogue is inspired from the actual words that his wife once made in real life to him.

I personally do not have a very high opinion of Gulzar as a poet. In my opinion, Gulzar is far better as a dialogue writer than as a poet. As a poet, he is awkward, plays around with words that sound very well but have little or no poetic embellishment, sometimes making simple things sound more complex.

It still makes him a very fine lyricist, though, because music works as a distraction from the words, and then there are those flashes of brilliance. Take for example, one of the otherwise very fine songs: Humne dekhi hain in aankhon se mehakti khushboo”- eyes that smell like flowers? I find this one difficult to swallow. One can pull out many other examples, and probably this will be the subject of another post.

This post, however, brings out some discussions on his lyrics from deep down the internet archives- I first read them in the mid- 1990s, and this thread pertained to comparisons between Sahir Ludhianvi and Gulzar. The internet browsing community then was dominated by the fans of Sahir, I have a feeling that the tables have now turned and Sahir is less popular than Gulzar. A whole generation has grown up without listening to Sahir as much as it has listened to Gulzar. The fact that Sahir died nearly three decades ago, and his best work was in the 1950s and 60s, makes sound him far less contemporary than Gulzar.

Sami Mohammad satirized Gulzar’s style in this interesting re- write of some of Sahir’s popular lyrics in the style of Gulzar. The thread was called “Gulzar becomes Sahir”. The style that Sami has chosen is more like the Gulzar of the 1970s and 1980s, I’d wager that the Gulzar post 1990s is more mature as a lyricist.

Museindia’s July- Aug issue has a focus on contemporary Indian Urdu literature. The selection of the poetry is lackadaisical, certainly, I believe, because of the laboured translation into English. Some of the short stories are good, like this one by Joginder Paul:

Hero

What could I really do?

We need a few new faces for our latest feature film, and our producer Appa sahib had said, “You can cast any one for any role, but the hero will be my man.”

The man Appa sahib had chosen to be the hero, was by nature a villain. Perhaps I was still in search of a hero or who knows what, I cast someone as the villain, who actually appeared to me as sensitive, innocent, and well-intentioned, just like my hero.

“But …. I …..” the young man said hesitantly.

“What do you mean by that? Who is going to accept you as a hero unless you have made a complete villain of yourself.”

The essay “The Situation of the Urdu Writer” by CM Naim, written in 1994 is still as relevant as it is scathing. Reading it, I recalled my own sisyphean endeavours at learning Urdu via a distance education program of the Jamia Milia Islamia University. I used to receive lessons by post and was supposed to complete exercises within a fortnight. The initial ones were duly examined and marked by an anonymous mentor. After the third or fourth instalment, the mentor apparently lost interest and I stopped getting the responses back. When I told this to a friend, a writer and playwright who had himself switched from writing in Urdu to Hindi, he commented wryly “Your mentor must be thinking why lead this young enthusiast astray? What has he himself achieved by learning Urdu?”

Naim echoes the frustrations, like that of my friend’s, of writing in Urdu today, and yet, why it needs to be written.

If, however, you are not in with the ignorant bureaucrats or their imbecilic advisors from academia, you have no choice but to publish the book yourself. Average first edition: 400 to 1,000 copies.

Congratulations! You now have a book out, but will it sell? A lucky first edition sells in two or four yeas. That is the end of your book, unless someone brings out a pirated edition in Pakistan. In fact, you secretly long that someone will. How else will you reach that other audience of yours?

Of course, while all this was going on, you were also trying to find and hold a job, to raise a family. Then one day your daughter comes home from school and tearfully shows you her Hindi or history textbook. It says that the Muslims were aliens in India, that they only destroyed temples and persecuted the Hindus and made no positive contribution; that they must be ‘brought back into the main stream of Indian life’. Or your son tells you how he was taunted by some boys who called him a ‘Babur’s son.’ (Babur was the Central Asian prince who conquered parts of northern India in 1526 and laid the foundation for what later came to be known as Mughal dynasty.) What do you say to them? Or perhaps you have the experience yourself when you go to the corner store and find written on its wall in crude letters: ‘Babur’s children / Go to your graves or to Pakistan!’. Should you then not find it amusing that even the ugly slogan aimed at you was written in Hindi while, conversely, it used a jingle form that imitated Urdu? Perhaps not. Hashimpura, Maliana, Bhagalpur, Meerut, Bhiwandi, Baroda, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bombay, Surat, Bhopal – what happened in these and many other places was far from amusing.

So, you return home and write a story, in Urdu. For writing in Urdu in India is now definitely a political act. It may not empower you much, but it still lets you assert the fact of your existence. You authorise yourself. In a time of plagues, that is enough.

A reader of the Diwan-e-Ghalib can hardly discern the humor that Ghalib was known for. These excerpts from the television serial Mirza Ghalib that introduced the master to a new generation bring out some of his quips.